Posted on 02/15/2002 3:32:52 PM PST by jodorowsky
Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a wrong can be?
I was in the Canadian VIP pavilion at Salt Lake when Jamie and David were cruelly cut down on Monday -- or, as I like to think of it, 2/11. "This is outrageous!" I cried, leaping to my feet, falling backwards and landing on top of Brian Tobin, Allan Rock and Bill Graham (a perfect triple putz). "Canada must reverse this injustice!"
"Well, now, hold on," said Naomi Klein, emerging from the no-hospitality suite. "Did Canada deserve to lose? Of course not. But there's a different question that must be asked: Did Canadian foreign policy create the conditions in which such apparently twisted logic could flourish? In other words ..."
As if on cue, the massed ranks of The Toronto Star comment team, face down in the beer nuts, jerked instantly to life and droned in unison: "Why do they hate us?"
"Exactly," said Alexa McDonough. "Poverty breeds hopelessness. Hopelessness breeds resentment. Resentment breeds 5.0, 5.2, 4.9, 4.7 and in extreme cases 3.4. We need to address the root causes of what happened."
"Come off it," I said. "Look at that." Yet again the cameras showed that shocking moment in the warm-ups when the Russian pair collided with Jamie and sent her crashing to the ice.
"Hmm," mused The Globe And Mail film critic Rick Groen, toying with a cocktail olive. "Grey Skirt Down is simultaneously an accomplished piece of kinetic brilliance yet highly suspect in its political resonance. Devoid of context, it presents us with an artificial choice between 'good' Canadians and a crude Slavic enemy straight from the Cold War era that reduces the narrative to feeble jingoistic propaganda."
John Ralston Saul strolled in from the balcony. As always in his appearances in this column, the vice-regal consort was completely naked, though, in deference to the sub-zero temperatures, His Excellency was wearing a Canada Council toque and a hand-knitted woollen condom. "Though superficially comforting, it's too easy to deal in simplistic concepts such as 'winning' and 'losing,' " he said, warming his frostbitten buttocks over the hot punch. "Clinging to outmoded certainties, reducing complex issues to black and white, is not particularly useful or helpful. It's a very American fault, frankly."
"Cowboy justice!" agreed Michele Landsberg. " 'We wuz robbed.' 'I won, you lost.' 'Stick 'em up and hand over your medals.' 'Let's head 'em off at the pass.' "
"Just so," said John, presenting Michele with the Order of Canada and a signed copy of Equilibrium: Toward A New Inertia. "I sometimes feel that the almost psychotic Canadian aggressivity towards Russia has less to do with figure-skating scoring and more to do with a desperate attempt to avenge western Christianity's many failed attempts to conquer and subjugate Russian Orthodoxy. Hitler, Napoleon, the Crimea, etc., etc. (Memo to Rideau Hall stenographer: Fill out with historical detail for a couple of paragraphs.)"
To be honest, I was glad to see my old friend Federal Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson wander over from the bar. "In the four minutes since this alleged occurrence occurred, I have been able to conduct a full and thorough investigation," he announced. "I did not find any incidence of involvement on the part of the judges which could have given rise to any real or apparent impropriety on their parts. On the contrary, the high standards of the judging process have been completely respected. Move along, folks. There's nothing to see here."
"That's ridiculous!" I scoffed. "What about meeting up a month before the Games to decide the results?"
"Under the new tightened-up ISU guidelines," replied Howard, "that's no longer unethical. Ask Jean. He knows all about figure skating."
"Dat right," said the Prime Minister. "I skate over da figures all da time. I say, sure, I call da bank guy to loan da Grand-M?re a couple hunnerd thousan', but I already sold da golf course for half da millions, even though I have to loan da guy da money to buy da place, but I write da contract on da paper napkin so all da zeroes faded and blurry. So I know about skatin' on da thin ice. I'm not sayin' I'd have slam into Jamie in da rehearsal like da Russian skater did. I leave dat to Warren Kinsella. Dat da Canadian value."
Mr. Chr?tien glanced at the TV screen. "Beside, we winning lot o' da udder medal. Look at dis woman in da luge. Sure, she glance off da wall, which knock da twentieth of a second off da time, but she's really picking up da speed now."
"Er, Prime Minister," Allan Rock pointed out, "that's an 87-year-old granny on a trolley rolling down a corridor at the Royal Victoria while the orderly gives an interview about health cuts to Lloyd Robertson."
"Yeah, well it still da phenomenals performance, and da personal best."
Before I could comment, Professor Sunera Thobani of the University of British Columbia had burst in on us. "There will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until the Western domination of figure skating is ended!" she roared to an inscrutable Hedy Fry. "Look at that!" She pointed at the TV, where the CBC was replaying in slow motion the bit where David is propelling Jamie backwards toward the camera on one leg as the wind blows her skirt up. "What message is that sending to Canadian lesbians?"
"Well," I said, "it's sending the message that Jamie has one hell of a cute ..."
"It's saying that in our society women are expected go backwards at the behest of the white patriarchal oppressor," snapped Sunera. "It's a very old message that every aboriginal woman, every woman of colour, every woman of orientation will recognize."
"I dunno bout dat," said Jean, "but we don wan da racisms or da backlash against da ethnic types in da goofy clothes. Dat why I schedule da big fundraiser wit da Russian Mafia. Maybe I put anudder Ukrainian in Rideau Hall. Dat's da Canadian way, eh?"
"That's right," agreed Lloyd Axworthy, popping in en route to the Belarus Men's Curling Team disco. "The easy thing would have been to quit, to walk away from the table. But this result shows what can happen when Canadian soft power is projected at the international level. Sure, you have to compromise, you don't get everything you want, but we hung in there and we ended up, I think, with a very good result that reflects a broad-based global consensus -- the Russians, the Chinese, our colleagues in the Francophonie, emergent East bloc democracies. I'm only sorry we couldn't bring the Iraqis on board."
My head was beginning to reel, so I was glad to see long-time Finance Minister Paul Martin coming through the door. "What do you make of this, Paul?" I asked, handing him David and Jamie's scores.
"5.8, 5.8, 5.9, 5.8, 5.8, 5.9," he read. "Well, I've always said that the Canadian dollar would eventually stabilize, and this is a rate that's good for Canada, good for the economy, and leaves us very competitive internationally. On the other hand, if you're planning on staying down here through the weekend, I'm happy to give a speech and talk it up over six cents."
This wasn't you, was it?
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